“I was coming, sir, bull roosh, when just as I was running along the river-bank, wondering how I was to swim out to you among them crocodiles, some one popped out from the bushes and fetched me down with an awful crack on the pan.”
“Struck you down?”
“Yes, sir. Hit me crool. There’s a lump on the top now as big as your fist. Regularly knocked me silly. Just as they must have served you—knocked every bit of sense out of me. There warn’t much in, as old Tipsy says, but I didn’t know no more till I found myself here, feeling sick as a dog, and not able to move, for I was lying awkward-like on my back, with some of them thin rotan canes tied round my arms and legs so tight that it was only at times I knowed I had any arms and legs at all.”
“Poor fellow!” said Archie pityingly.
“Yes, I just have been a poor fellow, sir—poor creature, as they called them up in my part of the country. Why, I have been quite mazed-like. That topper I got seemed to do for me altogether; and when I come-to, here I was lying in this place, not knowing where I was, and, like you, sir, I couldn’t make out what it meant.”
“And in the darkness, too,” said Archie, “just like this?”
“Like which, sir? Why, it ain’t dark now!”
“Black darkness,” said Archie.
The young private whistled softly and said nothing, but shook his head and thought.
“But you know what place it is, don’t you, Pete?”